[SapphireSun]

Retirement isn't a drain, it is a social service. Unless you are wealthy, you cannot retire without corporate or government social insurance plans like pensions, social security, paid off mortgages, medicare, etc. Without these plans, we go back to the Dickensian past where the poor and old slept on the streets or in workhouses until they died.

Some might even say retirement is the goal of life, defined however the individual wants to define it.

[SamReidHughes]

Social services themselves are a drain on social services -- that is the sense in which I meant retirement is one.

[SapphireSun]

Sorry, I realized that after I posted, but I disagree with the framing (based on my interpretation of the word "drain") that using them is inherently a bad thing or that they should be rationed in some way.